Google’s Eric Schmidt Responds To Government Concerns Over Privacy Policy

Google is in the process of changing their privacy policy. Rather than having 60+ different privacy policies that cover each of their products they’ve opted for one comprehensive policy that covers all of their products collectively.

Congressman Ed Markey, along with seven other members of congress, sent a letter to Google expressing their concern over Google’s new collective privacy policy. They are concerned over the “blanketing” of all of their services together and the sharing of user information across Google products. Representative Markey sent a separate letter as well questioning whether or not Google’s new policy is in violation of a settlement Google made with the FTC in March of 2011.

Google’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt appeared on Fox Business Friday to refute the allegations from the government. “The current criticism is a little bit misinformed,” Schmidt told Fox Business.

More after the break

Schmidt went on to say:

“What we did with our privacy policy is that we updated it to reflect the reality of the products we’re building and what customers really want. And the great thing about it is the privacy is incredibly clear as to what your rights are and what information we can use and in many cases you can control the information.”

Another issue that has come up over Google’s new privacy policy is whether or not Google will support anonymous search. Schmidt said that anonymous search was at the core of people looking up information.

Schmidt went on to explain there are ways for people to opt out of the new privacy policy. He also went on to say that Google’s Chrome Browser has an incognito mode, that when utilized, doesn’t give any information back to the internet at all.

We will have to see how this plays out in Washington DC. In the meantime we still have over a month before Google’s new privacy policy takes affect and by then it will all be sorted out.

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